


Lost To The Stars.

by LostAndDowned



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Just A Dream AU, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, complicated things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:01:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23332039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostAndDowned/pseuds/LostAndDowned
Summary: "It was just a dream," he tells himself, doing his best to will away all the "what if"s, "Mom was cruel, but she wouldn't do something like that."He opens his eyes, afraid to face the reflected fear in Spinel's face, and stares out at the endless ocean.Bismuth comes to mind.Jasper comes to mind.Every damn gem his mother had abandoned comes to mind."She wouldn't," he tries again, gazing at the world he can still see as cracked and broken and toxic, and he wonders, "Would she?"Thousands upon thousands of miles away, a once-starry-eyed gem now stares at the endless sky with a tear-stained face and an upside-down gem.A butterfly land on her shoulder.She doesn't even twitch.
Relationships: Bismuth & Lapis Lazuli & Peridot (Steven Universe), Crystal Gems & Steven Universe, Lapis Lazuli & Spinel (Steven Universe), Spinel & Steven Universe, Spinel (Steven Universe) & Everyone
Comments: 24
Kudos: 87





	1. Be A Friend, Play A Game.

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Pink Little Game.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20503421) by [LostAndDowned](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostAndDowned/pseuds/LostAndDowned). 



> This is a re-write of Pink Little Game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a re-write of Pink Little Game.

He can't help but compare her to a twisted magician.

She appears out of thin air, after all.

She comes at the exact moment with the most dramatic impact, and by the stars it almost seems _staged_.

The gem is creative in her approach, caution all but thrown to the wind as Spinel attacks, and the fight is more like an elaborate dance on everyone's part.

When the performance is over, both parties have lost and Steven is left wondering just what the hell he's supposed to do now.

Everyone forgives because everyone forgets, but even that is shattered at the end of things.

His friends—no, his _family_ —slowly return to him and now it's time for her to remember.

He can't help but wonder if she wants to remember because the Spinel now seems so careless and happy while the gem before had been...well, had been _Spinel_.

And remember she does, with tears that Steven can feel but not see because they aren't really there no matter how much Spinel would've given to cry just once.

She stops the injector and everyone is happy, but—distantly—Steven knows she's not and that she hasn't been _happy_ in a long time.

(He doesn't have the time to mull over how he knows, but he's not worried.)

And her "not happy" had turned into "not safe" and "all alone" and she had pushed him away.

He wishes he had put the injector in another pocket or given it to someone else, but he didn't and now she's killing everything.

A deadly misunderstanding leaves him with a gem he hardly knows almost destroying his planet.

She almost breaks him and he wonders dully if she would have broken herself, but he can already feel her jagged edges and he knows that she's already broken.

(Distantly, the thought feels odd because when has Steven _ever_ thought of a person as broken, but it is his thought after all so perhaps he's changed more than he'd like to admit.)

(Changed.)

Steven changes and they fight atop the very weapon she's brought to destroy him.

He sings because that's just how he _fixes_ things (she's a person, not a thing, she doesn't need _fixing_ , why is he thinking like this) and she screams an honest reality.

You can't just fix everything by singing some stupid song.

(And he already knows that, but part of him _doesn't_ and he's not sure where that part of him is coming from.)

(He almost thinks that it wasn't part of him at all, but he dismisses it because he's not _that_ paranoid quite yet.)

(Perhaps he should be, though.)

His song ends and all he can do is block her punches with a shield that grows stronger by the minute and hope that she'll-

GIVE. UP.

She tells him that she wants to kill him and he can't help but feel a little happy because she's the first gem he's ever fought that fought him for _him_.

They were fighting for a mistake that wasn't his, but she had come to Earth looking for Steven Universe.

Spinel wasn't looking for her friend.

She was looking for him.

Then the gem tells him that she does, in fact, want him to be her friend and he can tell that _friend_ is a rather fragile thing.

His bubble doesn't form in time.

The world burns bright and his skin burns hot.

Steven wakes with a jolt, falling from his bed into a heap of body and blanket on the hardwood floor.

"A dream," he breathes, a little hysterically as his eyes catch his window to find an unbroken planet.

He closes his eyes with a sigh and the image of him burning—her drifting away from him—burns at his mind worse than any biopoison ever could.

"It was just a dream," he tells himself, doing his best to will away all the "what if"s, "Mom was cruel, but she wouldn't do something like that."

He opens his eyes, afraid to face the reflected fear in Spinel's face, and stares out at the endless ocean.

Bismuth comes to mind.

Pearl comes to mind.

Every damn gem his mother had abandoned comes to mind.

"She wouldn't," he tries again, gazing at the world he can still see as cracked and broken and toxic, and he wonders, "Would she?"

Thousands upon thousands of miles away, a once-starry-eyed gem now stares at the endless sky with a tear-stained face and an upside-down gem.

A butterfly land on her shoulder.

She doesn't even twitch.


	2. Cards And Revelations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know what I'm doing, but hey! Let's do this!

Despite the dream—or what he _hopes_ was a dream—his day passes quietly.

He does his duties and plays their weird version of fetch with Lion and doesn't ask Pearl the questions that have been burning on his mind.

(He remembers burning, too.)

The sun starts to dip in the sky—the world turning away from the light—and Steven tentatively feels for the worry in his mind the way one would feel for a bruise, careful and gentle as he searches.

It's not gone, but he can feel that the pain has diluted to a more manageable level as he's ignored his issues.

(Worry doesn't go away like this, and a deep-seated part of him knows this. The rest, however, is happy to gloss over the fact that Steven suddenly has a lot less to deal with.)

(Energy does not die; it just goes somewhere else.)

(Emotions are the same, but he doesn't know that.)

And with his worry gone, he lets his guard pull away with the tide. He bites his tongue less and less until he's at a minimal filter by the time he and Amethyst convince Garnet and Pearl to join a game of cards.

(They have time, after all.)

As he shuffles his hand into something orderly, he finally decides to ask a question.

Just one, and something vague, too.

"Did mom have any other friends?"

Pearl blinks once, twice, three times before replying, "Well, yes, there were quite a lot of other Crystal Gems."

"Other friends on Homeworld, I mean," Steven clarifies and Pearl spares the other two a glance before telling him, "Well, there were the other Diamonds, but they never really did get along. Why do you ask?"

"Just curious, I guess," Steven says with a shrug before turning back to his cards, relief settling over him like a blanket because _she wasn't real_.

He plays his hand with a genuine grin, "I win."

"Aw, come on!" Amethyst groans, slamming her cards against the table to reveal a pretty weak hand.

Pearl sets hers down face-up on the table, displaying a hand that only looses to Steven's by a point or so.

"Congratulations," she says amusedly, "You beat Amethyst and I."

Her wording makes him pause before he turns to Garnet and realizes that there's no way he could have beat her.

She has _future vision_ after all.

She turns her hand to show her cards and-

"What!?" Amethyst practically screeches, "A Bigby? How do you even _get_ a Bigby!?"

Getting a Bigby on your first hand is practically impossible, but again _future vision_.

Steven tells her as much and Amethyst seems to settle on that as Garnet deals the next game.

(It should seem obvious, but letting someone with future vision deal is probably not going to end well for Steven.)

"Oh!" Pearl says, surprised, "There was one!"

"Huh?" Amethyst asks and Pearl turns to Steven.

"I just remembered. Your mother _did_ have a playmate back on Homeworld," Pearl tells him and his stomach flips, "Oh, what was her name. It was so long ago; it must have been thousands of years. Before the rebellion at least. I can't seem to remember her name, though."

"Spinel?" Steven asks, subtlety-be-damned, and Pearl blinks.

"Yes," she tells him, "Yes, I think that was it. Why?"

Steven stands abruptly because while he'd rather play a game of cards, he's now aware that he might have to play something else altogether.

He moves to the warp-pad with a lightning speed, Pearl shouting after him, and he's already blindly set a course for a garden he shouldn't know how to get to before he notices Garnet's joined him on the pad.

She looks at him calmly and tells him as they're warping, "Pearl and Amethyst will wait for us at home."

"You don't seem very concerned," he notes and she raises an eyebrow, inquiring, "Should I be?"

"Not for me," he tells her, "Not for me."

"There are too many variables for my future vision to tell me where we're going an why, Steven," she lets him know, "But I trust you and I trust your decisions."

Steven swallows past the guilt and relief and confliction and confusion, instead nodding and briefly explaining, "I had a dream. With Spinel. And I have to do whatever it takes to make sure it or anything like it never ever ever comes true."

(Because his bubble hadn't popped in time.)

(Because he'd put the Rejuvenator in the wrong pocket.)

(Because Spinel had hurt his friends.)

(Because he had hurt her back.)

As they land in the garden, Steven makes many promises.

He promises that he'll make his bubbles in time.

He promises that he'll break the Rejuvenator the minute he sees it.

He promises that he'll keep his friends safe.

He promises that he'll be careful with the gem his mother had flipped like a coin without care.

He's broken promises before and he _knows_ that, but by the stars will he try his hardest to keep these.

If not for him, then for the gem who is not a coin and not alright and not his mother's friend.

(But maybe she'll be his instead.)


	3. The Sky Is Lost.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The same sky she's watched for far too long stares back at her with a trillion unblinking eyes and it takes everything in her to pry her gaze from theirs to stare at the now brightly-lit warp pad with something like fear and wonder and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long with the update!  
> Look for some explanation and a brief alternate scene at the end notes.

Spinel's time passes in the same shaded blur that it always does.

The stars swivel and change and the wonder of the endless expanse never dies.

Even as her heart had begun to flip over centuries of solitude, the stars had always been there and while they weren't always the _same_ stars, she finds a restless comfort in the blanket of space she wears like a cape.

And while she may not be powerful—and certainly not heroic—she's well aware that there is power in the stars that have favoured her.

(And they _have_ favoured her. The ancient and burning beings that may or not be alive have _listened_ and they have taken the stories she whispers and spread them across the galaxy into the minds of many like a distant daydream.)

(Spinel doesn't know that they love her and she doesn't know what they've done for her and she won't be the one to realize it either.)

The same sky she's watched for far too long stares back at her with a trillion unblinking eyes and it takes everything in her to pry her gaze from theirs to stare at the now brightly-lit warp pad with something like fear and wonder and hope.

She takes a shaky step to the brilliant glow, the foilage tearing underfoot as she grins brightly to greet her diamond. She's midway to her second step when _two_ incredibly familiar figures stand on the warp-pad in place of the _one_ she'd bee waiting for and she can feel the hope shrivel in her chest.

"Spinel," Steven-fucking-Universe breathes in relief because _of course it's him. She'd seen the broadcast_.

Her grin tilts and her eyes narrow and she really shouldn't be surprised but she is surprised and she locks in place.

(She's lost, she's lost, she's lost the game and she knows it, but maybe he won't realize that she's moved from her spot if she refuses to move from this one.)

"Spinel," he says with a wary smile, "The game's over."

The words send ice down her spine because _he knows_. He knows she can't follow orders or play games and she's useless and he'll rejuvenate her just like he did inside her make-believe because she's _better that way_.

He steps forward cautiously, the other gem—Garnet, she reminds herself—waiting at the base of the warp-pad.

Each step he takes feels like it shakes the garden, shakes her, to the very core and by the time he stops in front of her she's not sure if she's relieved or terrified to note that he _doesn't have_ a rejuvenator with him.

The fear comes in the realization that without a rejuvenator the only way to fix her is to destroy her and part of her is terrified of destruction.

The relief comes in the remembrance of millennia spent alone and the exhaustion that came with standing for what could have been forever.

She is tired of standing and she is tired of games and she is _tired_ of pretending to hurt everyone and everything because she doesn't have it in her to do it in a way that counts.

A hand lands on her shoulder and her gaze snaps to Steven's and he smiles.

"You win, Spinel," he tells her with a tired little laugh, "Congratulations."

And the fear of destruction is destroyed instead of her and she isn't sure if he's playing with her. If he is, he knows exactly what to do and what to say because this just might be the cruellest thing anyone's ever done to her and that's _including_ being abandoned by Pink.

(And there's no way to ignore that fact now, either. She _was_ abandoned and Pink was never going to come back.)

_Chrk_.

Her vision swims and the garden tilts.

(Pink wasn't right to hurt her the way she had, and the garden may have been the worst but it hadn't been the first.)

_Chrk_.

The stars hum like they're singing and they shine brighter than she's ever seen.

(She doesn't _want_ to win. Not anymore.)

_Chrk_.

Several not-so-shallow fissures starting at her core burn as they reach the edges of her gem and it only catches Steven's attention and his gaze when a tiny piece _clinks_ against the stone beneath her feet.

Horror is the last thing she sees but far from the last thing she feels because there can only be joy in a ~~death~~ destruction beautiful enough to make the stars sing for something as ugly as her.

Her eyes slip shut and the song of the sky dwindles into something peaceful as her body disappears shards of pink clatter to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a few things.
> 
> One. The reason Garnet is barely there is because Spinel barely notices her and this chapter is very VERY Spinel-focused.
> 
> Two. The whole star thing is very VERY complicated and I'll maybe get around to explaining it in the work, IDK yet.
> 
> Alternate Scene:
> 
> Her grin flips and her eyes narrow and she stands with her feet spaced and body braced to defend herself.  
>  Logically, part of her screams that she deserves this, but her head is still spinning because she'd lost the game by running after a ghost and gems don't even make ghosts because they don't die because they're not people.  
>  "Spinel," Steven says, almost pleadingly, "the game's over. You don't have to stay here anymore."  
>  The game's over.  
>  It rings in her ears and reverberates inside her skull and the anger she hasn't dared to feel outside of something pretend becomes very not pretend and while she knows she doesn't have a chance against all of the Crystal Gems without a weapon, taking out two shouldn't be too hard.  
>  "The game's over, is it?" she asks through gritted teeth with a feral glaze to her glare.  
>  Spinel takes a pointed step forward and she can tell that the boy's starting to regret his decision to come here and part of her feels a vindictive joy in making him squirm where he stands. A too-long arm gestures to the foilage she'd ruined and the game she'd lost and she tilts her head.  
>  "You won, Spinel," he tells her with a wary smile, "You win. The game's over."  
>  "I win?" she asks with a hopeful tone, "Really? You mean it?"  
>  "Yeah, yeah, Spinel, you win. You can leave now," he says and she can't help but laugh at the equally hopeful expression on his face.  
>  "Steven," the gem beside the boy—Garnet, she reminds herself dully—warns but he ignores her hesitance and takes a concerned step toward Spinel.  
>  She's lost because she's made him lose and she isn't going to let him get away with that.


End file.
